St. Margaret's RC Church - History (New Mission)

St. Margaret's RC Memorial Church

Dunfermline, Fife

By 1823 Catholic Christians had returned to Dunfermline to find the shrine of St. Margaret dishonoured - relegated to a place outside the walls of the reconstructed neo-Gothic Abbey Church used by the Reformers. Her relics had been scattered. The head of the Saint, kept at Douai Seminary in France, had been hidden and never recovered during the godless period of the French Revolution. But some of the remains, which had been taken to Spain and kept in the Escorial by Philip 11, were returned to Scotland by Bishop Gillis during the 1860s and kept at the Ursuline Convent of St. Margaret in Edinburgh where they remained until 2008.

Between 1823 and 1899 several important developments took place which precipitated a renaissance of Scottish Catholicism in Dunfermline:

the influx of Irish Catholics to Fife to work on the construction of the Victorian railways;
generous patronage of both churches and schools by wealthy Catholic families in the tradition of St. Margaret;
the re-establishment of the Scottish Hierarchy of Bishops and Archbishops by Pope Leo XII in 1878;
the emergence of native Scottish priests of great missionary zeal;
the coming of monastic orders of sisters, the Carmelites to Oakley and the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul to Dunfermline;
the re-establishment of pilgrimages in honour of St. Margaret.

Chalmers' History of Dunfermline notes:

"Roman Catholic congregation founded 1823. Having no resident priest, they meet in the houses of two of their number who conduct the usual services but, of course, do not perform mass."

By 1831 a visiting priest from Edinburgh said Mass every six weeks and by 1835 a priest from Stirling came every four weeks. At last, when the congregation had grown in number to 397 souls, a resident priest was appointed. He was Rev. Aeneas Dawson and the year was 1846. He was allowed the use of a small room in the Town House where, by permission of the Magistrates, he celebrated Mass for his flock on Sundays. In 1847 he obtained the lease of a larger hall which was fitted up exclusively for use as a Chapel and opened on Pentecost Sunday. The lease of this hall expired in 1850 and it was taken by the railway company. It seemed the growing congregation would have no place to meet. The hall had become too small to accommodate them, in any case, since the railway work had attracted a constant influx of workers, many of whom were Irish Catholics - "poor in chattels but rich in Faith" - the inheritors of Columba's Celtic tradition.

The Annals of Dunfermline (Henderson), under the date 1851 contain the following entry:

"Roman Catholic Chapel- The hall in Queen Anne Place was taken on lease by this body of worshippers and by them fitted up for their place of worship." This was the Masons' Hall, afterwards the Church Hall of Queen Anne Presbyterian Church, Pilmuir Street. Father Aeneas Dawson, reputed an excellent preacher, a poet and translator of French literary works, left Dunfermline in 1852 to become a parish priest in Ottawa and died in Canada in 1855.

He was succeeded by Fr Michael O'Bierne, an Irish priest who was recalled to Ireland in 1855. The congregation by 1853 had reached 800, and the Masons' Hall, in its turn, had become too small. In 1854 Father O'Bierne and other members of the Catholic community signed an agreement with a Mr. Clark, proprietor of the Music Hall in Guildhall Street. The Hall was to be used on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation for Mass. Signatories to the agreement included James Mullan, father of Monsignor George Mullan who was to become one of Dunfermline's most distinguished Parish Priests.

Father John Stuart came to Dunfermline in 1855. For a time he fixed his headquarters at Lochgelly which had become a very large centre of population by 1859. He returned to Dunfermline however, when in 1860 Mr. Smith-Sligo, Laird of Inzievar, made an allowance of £60 to the Dunfermline priest. The Laird also generously provided money for a school and paid the salary of the teacher. The spirit of St Margaret was still alive in Dunfermline. She must have smiled on this wealthy man's concern for the intellectual and spiritual nourishment of the people. Mr Smith-Sligo also presented two acres of land as a site for a chapel and priest's house. This is the site on which the present Church is built in Holyrood Place. The ground had once belonged to the Abbey and had been known as the "Holy Blood Acres", a link with St Margaret. It was to be thirteen years before the congregation was able to build on the site, such was the poverty of most members at that time.

It was Father Francis McKerrell, Parish Priest from 1867 till 1879, who undertook the building of a chapel-school on the Holyrood Place site. He was a native of Paisley and studied at Blairs College and later in Rome. He became Provost of the Chapter of St Andrews and Edinburgh and later Monsignor. He was held in great affection by his flock and chose to be buried in Dunfermline. The opening of the chapel-school took place on Sunday 23rd March 1873. A contemporary report states: "It is certainly much to be regretted that nothing more worthy of the great name of St Margaret could be erected in Dunfermline, at least for the present, than the above humble substitute for a church ".

To make matters worse a heavy debt had been incurred. Yet to the children of the school and to their teachers the new building must have seemed palatial in comparison with the old school in Pilmuir Street. Year by year the school grew in numbers and in reputation. One notable headmistress of the period was Miss Catherine Mullan, sister of Monsignor George Mullan, who later entered the Community of the Sisters of Charity, several of whom were to serve the school in later years.

In 1878 the restoration of the Hierarchy of Bishops and Archbishops in Scotland marked an important step forward in Dunfermline's fortunes, for Archbishop Smith of the Diocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh was brother to Mr. Smith-Sligo of Inzievar, local benefactor of Dunfermline parish who must surely have been given added enthusiasm for the cause of Catholicism in Scotland by the influence accorded his brother.

Father J B Hare succeeded Monsignor McKerrell in 1879. He was an educationalist much interested in the welfare of the children. St Margaret still smiled on her people.

Parish Pastoral Council